by Daniela Gerson

From: The L.A. Times

Mria Onate had not read a book until her son started high school.

Her illiterate parents ended her schooling when she was 15, informing her that she had to get ready for marriage and work to help support the family in their rancho in Puebla, Mexico.

More than two decades later, she was shocked when the parent center coordinators at her son’s new high school, Bravo Medical Magnet, suggested she join a book club. She was there for her child’s education. She thought it was too late for her own.

“I hated to read,” Onate, 44, said in Spanish. “I read in elementary school, but I never read on my own.”

Continue reading “Book club helps immigrant mothers find joy in reading and support their kids’ education”

Pen Emerging Voices Author Evenings: Henri Cole and Amy Gerstler at Chevalier’s

This event is part of the Emerging Voices Author Evening Series to benefit PEN Center’s Freedom to Write Programs. Free to PEN Center USA members. Tickets available to the public.

Henri Cole is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Middle Earth, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He has received many awards for his work, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and most recently a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. His ninth collection, Nothing to Declare, was published last spring. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College.

Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, nonfiction and journalism. Scattered at Sea, a book of her poems was published in June 2015, and longlisted for the National Book Award. She was 2010 guest editor of the yearly anthology Best American Poetry. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and she has taught writing and/or visual art at numerous institutions. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at University of California at Irvine.

Where: Chevalier’s Books

Date: Monday the 7^th

Time: 7 pm

Address: 126 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004

Website: http://chevaliersbooks.com/ or http://penusa.org/author-evenings

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 3/7/16 – 3/13/16”

by Mike Sonksen

From: entropymag.org

Douglas Brown is a poet at the intersection of the avant-garde and tradition. Mixing experimental work with formalism, his work tackles three generations of his family history from his mother and father, his own rite of passage, and episodes with his son and daughter.

His award-winning book, Zero to Three is a tome of 32 poems about fatherhood, love, loss, American pop culture and the roller coaster range of emotions that are all a part of what it means to exist in the 21^st Century. Published by the University of Georgia Press, this volume was the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2013. The poems utilize formal structures like ghazals, sonnets, catalogues and segmented cantos with more experimental styles like stream of consciousness and prose poems.

Continue reading “Douglas Brown: The Bridge between the Avant-Garde and Formalism”

Issue 2 was amazing and they can’t wait to make issue 3 (To be released at the end of June) even better! Submissions are now open from until March 31st 2016.

Continue reading “Submissions Call for Angel City Review”

Los Angeles journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan has just released her second book “I Heart Obama,” on February 9. The following is about the book:

In his nearly two terms as president, Barack Obama has solidified his status as something black people haven’t had for fifty years: a folk hero. The 1960s delivered Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, forever twinned as larger-than-life outsiders and truth tellers who took on racism and died in the process. Obama is different: Not an outsider but president, head of the most powerful state in the world; a centrist Democrat, not the face of a movement. Yet he is every bit a folk hero, doing battle with the beast of a system created to keep people like him on the margins. He is unique among presidents and entirely unique among black people, who never expected to have a president so soon.

Continue reading “Palmetto Mornings: 2/16/16 Erin Aubry Kaplan – Author, “I Heart Obama””

A new literary journal has surfaced in Los Ángeles. It’s called S-Curves and hails from the community tucked into the Santa Monica Mountains. The community one passes as they make the drive along State Route 27 as one heads to the Malibu coast from The Valley.

Topanga is still known as an artiest colony as it became known during the 60s with the likes of Neil Young and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys having lived there for a time. Once again it’s a community proving the creative juices are literary too. As Faith Currant, editor of S-Curves says of her magazine, “The focus of the journal is on featuring the literary community of the canyon, but while we do give priority to Topanga writers, we are open to submissions from LA writers/artists based outside of Topanga as well.” If you anyone wants to know the kind of literature that is being penned in the community of Topanga, this magazine is a good place to start.

Continue reading “A New Literary Journal With an Eye on Topanga Canyon”